Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day, one and all! In honor of our planet’s special day, we want to restate our commitment to environmental stewardship.  We believe it is our corporate and social responsibility to help conserve and protect our resources. That’s why each year we examine our energy and utility usage, materials, ingredient sourcing, waste, and overall community and environmental impact to make sure we are operating Denver Beer Co. in the most sustainable, responsible way possible. 

News Flash: We got some EVs!

This year, we are super excited to announce that we’ve purchased a fleet of Nissan Leaf EVs for our sales team to utilize as they distribute beer and make sales calls around the state of Colorado and Wyoming. Now our sales team can travel emission free! It’s just one more step in our efforts to run our brewery in the most sustainable way possible. 

Plus we run on 100% Solar Power

Also, did you know? Our Canworks production facility is run on 100% solar power, meaning each can, bottle, and keg we produce is with 100% clean energy. Now that’s sun-thing we can all raise a glass too. Plus, our little fleet of EVs will charge directly from the solar energy we capture on our roof using our newly-installed EV charging station. 

And we use CO2 capture technology too

ICYMI: In early 2020, Denver Beer Co. partnered with The State of Colorado, Earthly Labs, and The Clinic to implement Earthly Lab’s  innovative carbon dioxide capture technology. Denver Beer Co is the first brewery in the state of Colorado to implement this technology and participate in the State of Colorado’s Pilot Program which established the first commercial exchange of recovered carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. Through the pilot program, Denver Beer Co captures and stores excess carbon dioxide produced during the beer fermentation process for later reuse by cannabis cultivators that require carbon dioxide to stimulate plant growth during cultivation. The exchange fills a need for both industries while reducing carbon dioxide emissions in Colorado. Denver Beer continues to use the Earthly Labs carbon capture technology and will capture over 100,000 lbs/year of carbon dioxide with this technology to be recycled and reused by other industries, ensuring it is not emitted into the environment.

Tell me more!

If you are wondering, here is our list additional sustainability efforts:

1. 95% of our malt for brewing is sourced from Colorado.
2. In 2020, we sourced 1.3 million pounds of barley from Colorado farmers.
3. When possible, we source our hops and yeast from Colorado.
4. We stagger our electricity usage throughout the day and night which lowers our peak demand and allows the energy grid to operate more efficiently.
5. We have positioned our breweries in close proximity to bike trails to encourage patrons to bike as opposed to drive to our locations.
6. Our breweries utilize ultra high efficiency hot water heaters to minimize energy usage during brewing.
7. The glycol lines in our Canworks brewery are ultra-insulated to reduce heat transfer and loss.
8. All of our breweries utilize heat exchangers for heat recovery from brew kettle to hot liquor tank meaning hot water is conserved and can be used for the next brew or cleaning.
9. All of our major equipment pumps utilize Variable Frequency Drive pumps which reduces our loads to use only exactly what we need.
10. We have installed motion sensor lights in our industrial sized cooler, curtains and heavily insulated door to minimize energy usage.
11. Our Canworks brewery has large-grade skylights which helps reduce our use of lighting during most brewing hours in the entire facility.
12. Our breweries utilize over 90% LED lighting to reduce energy usage.
13. Our Canworks brewery has a new roof with updated insulation and white reflective coating to minimize hot/cold transfer and thus reduces our need to heat/cool the building.
14. Our Canworks brewery utilizes a centrifuge for dry hopping. This practice reduces ingredients required by optimizing aroma extraction and simplifying the dry hopping process.
15. Our new high-efficiency canning line utilizes an ionized air-rinse for sanitation and better low-fill quality detection.  With less low-fill beers we minimize both water usage and material waste.
16. Our Platte St brewery utilizes waterless urinals which save thousands of gallons of water each year.
17. Denver Beer Co Canworks has a new high-efficiency 1.47 MMBtu/hr single-process boiler without a low NOx burner. This boiler is exempt from air pollution emissions reporting according to Regulation 3 II.D.1.k.
18. We use only cardboard packaging for easier recycling and to reduce risk of wildlife entanglement in plastic rings.
19. We transport all spent grain to local farm for cattle feed thus repurposing a large portion of our organic brewing materials.
20. We have instigated an internal recycling program to ensure cans, pallets,and cardboard materials are properly recycled.
21. We repurpose grain bags as trash bags and to transport cans to the recycling facility.
22. All of our breweries utilize electric hand dryers which save 1,000’s of paper towels each year.

We are incredibly proud of our sustainability efforts. We recognize that there is always room to do more, and we plan to prioritize sustainability and green initiatives as our brewery continues to grow. We are committed to our planet, and to creating a greener future for one and all. Happy Earth Day!